MOLLY DIDN’T LIKE STORMING OFF. IT WAS such a teenage thing to do, flouncing off to your bedroom, slamming doors along the way. Especially when nosy Mr Banderfrith was lurking in the lounge, and flouncing would give him something to gossip about to the other residents.
But she couldn’t seem to slow her stride or strike the indignation from her face. She stamped up to her room and flopped onto her bed with her notepad, Lowry’s book and Mr Wetherill’s almanac. On the desk, Gabriel emerged from behind her curtains as though he was hosting an evening of light entertainment.
“No, Gabriel, I don’t want to talk about my annoying mother. I’m going to distract myself by reading Lowry’s stupid research.”
Gingerly, the cat joined her on the bed.
Molly opened the book and squinted at the photographs, urgent notes and newspaper cuttings. “To be honest, though, I don’t know why I’m even humouring her.”
Gabriel looked at the photographs without interest. Molly flapped impatiently through the pages of the scrapbook.
“There are seven signs that a person might be a werewolf, and Lowry’s gran doesn’t display any of them,” she told the cat. “But now Lowry’s saying that her gran is a new kind of werewolf.” She scanned the notes. “Lowry thinks the curse of the Kroglin family is somehow going to pass to her. But that’s just not how werewolfism works. It’s not a magic curse; it’s more like a virus. But I don’t know how to convince Lowry that she’s wrong.”
Gabriel stretched and settled and watched her.
“I’m going to have to pretend to take her seriously, aren’t I? Maybe I can find a harmless werewolf remedy in one of the old botanical books and tell her to take it before the blue moon. What do you think?”
Gabriel stared blankly. Molly watched him until at last he blinked.
“Good – that’s settled, then.”
Molly shut Lowry’s book and frowned. She took up her notepad and stared at her crude sketch of the already crude mark on Carl’s arm:
She showed Gabriel the sketch. “This symbol could tell us what Furlock’s up to. It could help me to figure out his secret. Any ideas what it might mean?”
Gabriel looked.
“It looks like some sort of wonky … crucifix? Or maybe a phantom with big sleeves? Why do phantoms always have big sleeves? It’s not like they need to keep tissues handy.” She frowned. “Or do they?”
Gabriel had no opinion.
“Oh, I don’t know where to start!” She glared at the wall. “The maddening thing is, I feel like I’ve seen this shape before.”
She doodled. She tried to turn the shape into phantoms, crosses, trees, seesaws. She pondered the angle of the cross-beam. She wondered why the outstretched arms had horizontal flat bits. She paced the room. She read Wetherill’s almanac. Eventually she gave up, sat at her desk, opened Lowry’s scrapbook to try to unblock her head by reading some more of her friend’s silly research, turned a few pages, and fell asleep.
She woke hours later with her head stuck to a page; the gummy glue used to attach a newspaper clipping had oozed onto her face. She lifted her head and heard a rip as the clipping tore away from the scrapbook. In the window she saw her reflection. The torn scrap of newspaper on her cheek featured a photograph of Lowry’s grandmother in a parade, holding a flag.
“Oh, crud!” she said to Gabriel, who was reclining on the bed looking entertained. “Now I’ve got to explain to Lowry why I’ve spoiled her scrapbook. And to top it all, I’ve got a picture of Lowry’s gran on my head.” Gabriel looked at Molly’s reflection in the window and cocked his head.
Molly peeled off the paper and banged the table with her fist. “I’ve wasted the whole night!”
Then she looked closely at the picture.
“Some sort of parade,” she said.
Gabriel purred.
“She’s holding a flag…”
Purrrr.
“A flag…”
Gabriel yawned.
“A flag. The flag. The Howlfair – oh, flipping Nora, I’ve been studying it for the past three months! The Howlfair flag! That’s where I’ve seen it!”
Breathlessly she wrenched open her desk drawer.
Withdrew a vellum scroll.
Unfurled it and laid it flat on the desk.
The Howlfair flag was divided into quarters. In one quarter were three ravens carrying, between them, a banner containing the town motto in arcane script. One quarter was almost completely black, with mysterious grey vertical streaks; it was like a picture of night-time rain. In the third quarter was a picture of a hand holding a gem. But the bottom-right quadrant was a crowded mess of tiny signs and pictures, and nestling among them Molly found the following symbol, surrounded by a blue circle:
“Gabriel, it’s here! It’s right here on our flag!”
The cat hopped onto the desk. Molly pulled her magnifying glass from the drawer and put her face to the vellum.
“These squiggles dotted around the main shape – they can only be one thing,” she said. “They’re sigils – magical symbols or words turned into pictures to hide their meanings. In old magic books you always find that demons have their own sigils. They’re kind of like signatures.”
She pulled back from the page.
“Gabriel, this whole thing is a sigil! And I’d bet any money that it belongs to a demon – see the spikes that look like curling devil tails? I don’t know which demon, but trust me, I know exactly where to look to find out.”
Gabriel appeared impressed.
Molly set down the magnifying glass and narrowed her eyes. “Gabriel, we’ve had a breakthrough,” she announced. “Benton Furlock should’ve known better than to mess with a girl who knows about flags.”
With a twinge of guilt, Molly stuck the piece of ripped-off newspaper back into Lowry’s scrapbook. Then she climbed into bed and sank almost immediately to the bottom of the ocean of sleep.
She slept well that night, and dreamt vividly. She dreamt that a beautiful grey-haired woman was leading her through a misty, silver-lit grove. The woman turned and smiled at her. Molly had trouble seeing the woman’s face clearly, for it was partially obscured by what looked like butterflies. The lady stretched out her hand and pointed to the sky, and Molly looked up to see a glorious full moon, bright as a mirror. Somehow Molly knew that this was a special full moon, the second one in a month – that is, a blue moon. It turned dazzling cyan as Molly watched.
Suddenly the lady was beside her. A strong hand grabbed her shoulder. Butterflies orbited Molly. The moon blazed.
Then, just before Molly was woken by a real hand shaking her shoulder, the mysterious lady spoke some words to her in a kind but authoritative voice.
“Friendship, Molly,” she said, “is a sacred thing.”